Objective-C find caller of method

StackI hope that this helps:

NSString *sourceString = [[NSThread callStackSymbols] objectAtIndex:1];
// Example: 1   UIKit                               0x00540c89 -[UIApplication _callInitializationDelegatesForURL:payload:suspended:] + 1163
NSCharacterSet *separatorSet = [NSCharacterSet characterSetWithCharactersInString:@" -[]+?.,"];
NSMutableArray *array = [NSMutableArray arrayWithArray:[sourceString  componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet:separatorSet]];
[array removeObject:@""];

NSLog(@"Stack = %@", [array objectAtIndex:0]);
NSLog(@"Framework = %@", [array objectAtIndex:1]);
NSLog(@"Memory address = %@", [array objectAtIndex:2]);
NSLog(@"Class caller = %@", [array objectAtIndex:3]);
NSLog(@"Function caller = %@", [array objectAtIndex:4]);

In fully optimized code, there is no 100% surefire way to determine the caller to a certain method. The compiler may employ a tail call optimization whereas the compiler effectively re-uses the caller's stack frame for the callee.

To see an example of this, set a breakpoint on any given method using gdb and look at the backtrace. Note that you don't see objc_msgSend() before every method call. That is because objc_msgSend() does a tail call to each method's implementation.

While you could compile your application non-optimized, you would need non-optimized versions of all of the system libraries to avoid just this one problem.

And this is just but one problem; in effect, you are asking "how do I re-invent CrashTracer or gdb?". A very hard problem upon which careers are made. Unless you want "debugging tools" to be your career, I would recommend against going down this road.

What question are you really trying to answer?

Using answer provided by intropedro, I came up with this:

#define CALL_ORIGIN NSLog(@"Origin: [%@]", [[[[NSThread callStackSymbols] objectAtIndex:1] componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet:[NSCharacterSet characterSetWithCharactersInString:@"[]"]] objectAtIndex:1])

which will simply return me Original class and function:

2014-02-04 16:49:25.384 testApp[29042:70b] Origin: [LCallView addDataToMapView]

p.s. - if function is called using performSelector, result will be:

Origin: [NSObject performSelector:withObject:]

Just wrote a method that will do this for you:

- (NSString *)getCallerStackSymbol {

    NSString *callerStackSymbol = @"Could not track caller stack symbol";

    NSArray *stackSymbols = [NSThread callStackSymbols];
    if(stackSymbols.count >= 2) {
        callerStackSymbol = [stackSymbols objectAtIndex:2];
        if(callerStackSymbol) {
            NSMutableArray *callerStackSymbolDetailsArr = [[NSMutableArray alloc] initWithArray:[callerStackSymbol componentsSeparatedByString:@" "]];
            NSUInteger callerStackSymbolIndex = callerStackSymbolDetailsArr.count - 3;
            if (callerStackSymbolDetailsArr.count > callerStackSymbolIndex && [callerStackSymbolDetailsArr objectAtIndex:callerStackSymbolIndex]) {
                callerStackSymbol = [callerStackSymbolDetailsArr objectAtIndex:callerStackSymbolIndex];
                callerStackSymbol = [callerStackSymbol stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@"]" withString:@""];
            }
        }
    }

    return callerStackSymbol;
}

The Swift 2.0 version of @Intropedro's answer for reference;

let sourceString: String = NSThread.callStackSymbols()[1]

let separatorSet :NSCharacterSet = NSCharacterSet(charactersInString: " -[]+?.,")
let array = NSMutableArray(array: sourceString.componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet(separatorSet))
array.removeObject("")

print("Stack: \(array[0])")
print("Framework:\(array[1])")
print("Memory Address:\(array[2])")
print("Class Caller:\(array[3])")
print("Method Caller:\(array[4])")

Objective-C find caller of method

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